Facebook iPad app cloaked within iPhone version

Facebook's iPhone client is concealing an iPad application, and a rather good one by all accounts, easily revealed by changing a setting or two while waiting for the official launch.

Facebook has said there will be an iPad client, and one based largely on HTML 5, but Canadian student Marvin Bernal discovered that such a client is already available if one changes a single setting on the iPad. He promptly tweeted the news, and TechCrunch wasted no time posting scores of screenshots showing the iPad client.

Facebook has said there would be tablet clients for its social networking service really soon now, with an emphasis on HTML 5, but what seemed to be a minor update to the iPhone client actually contained working code for the iPad version which can be triggered by changing the UIDeviceFamily.

The native client certainly presents a superior experience to the iPhone version, using the latest interface metaphors with menus popping up on top of the display but more welcome is properly-integrated photograph viewing.

But with an official launch (presumably) only days away, it is the impatient fondler, and avid networker, who'll feel it necessary to use the unofficial version. ®